The Houston-Galveston Area Council hosted an open house Nov. 17 for Magnolia residents to view the Montgomery County Thoroughfare Plan.[/caption] After more than a year of planning, the Houston-Galveston Area Council unveiled an updated long-range transportation planning tool for Montgomery County at a Nov. 17 open house in Magnolia. The Connections Montgomery County Thoroughfare Plan is a result of collaboration between H-GAC, the county, city of Conroe and the Texas Department of Transportation to develop a blueprint of roadways for future development. “This gives the county a guide to move forward,” H-GAC Senior Transportation Planner Carlene Mullins said. “The existing thoroughfare plan is very sparse—this fills in the gaps. Also, there’s going to be design criteria for roads. If there’s a common design criteria of 100 feet of right of way for a certain thoroughfare, it will be designed to these minimum standards, and it will be the same across the county.”

Inside the plan

Though the plan outlines a number of proposed roadways, the routes are preliminary, and no engineering work has been completed yet, Mullins said. The idea of the plan is to preserve general corridors for a possible future roadway, such as a new connection from FM 1486 to FM 149 or Hwy. 242 and Hwy. 105, she said. The plan is also not designed to be a funding mechanism or a list of construction projects, Mullins said. Overseen by H-GAC, Montgomery County, TxDOT and the cities will determine which projects will be funded in the future, she said. “If a developer wants to develop an area, they could talk to them about participating in the cost of building a road, so the county doesn’t have to pay all of the road 100 percent,” Mullins said. This is the fourth update of the major thoroughfare plan, which has been in existence since 1979, Montgomery County Judge Craig Doyal said. Many of the corridor concepts have been carried through from the original plans, according to H-GAC. A prime example of a road being built to plan was Fish Creek Thoroughfare, Doyal said. If new subdivision developers come to the area, the county will encourage them to donate right of way for a future corridor identified in the plan to avoid displacement of residents, he said. “If a developer came in and bought a tract, we would tell them you are going to have to donate that right of way and build one of your subdivision roads on that right of way, so that way no homes will ever be impacted,” Doyal said. “No homes were impacted in the construction of Fish Creek. That’s the whole idea of tracts like this.”

Resident concerns

One of the projects with the most public comments submitted at the open house was the extension of Tamina Road north of FM 1488 parallel to the existing Honea Egypt Road. Magnolia resident Terry McGee is one of the many individuals who expressed concerns about the creation of the new roadway between two existing subdivisions—Cimarron Country and Sendera Lakes. If built as projected, McGee said the roadway would run through the middle of his property in Cimarron Country where he has lived for 12 years. “It wouldn’t be beneficial to anybody to anyone in our area,” McGee said. “Everybody I know is usually going south. To put something like that through there, you would have to buy so many homes out of there. It would almost kill the area just to do that.” After hearing many concerns from residents at the open house, Doyal said he plans to amend the map to remove the proposed Tamina Road extension.

Moving forward

Including the open house in Magnolia, H-GAC is holding four meetings in November across the county to gather public comments on the plan, which must be submitted by the Dec. 4 deadline at [email protected]. “Until they adopt the plan, it’s not set in stone,” Mullins said. “There will be a whole amendment process when it is adopted, and people can come in and speak to the county or city of Conroe.” Doyal said he anticipates Commissioners Court will approve the plan with any amendments from the public comment period by the end of December. Mullins said H-GAC recommends the plan is updated a minimum of every five years. For more information and maps on the plan, visit www.montgomerycountymobility.com.